Companies should manage technology and business innovation, says Gartner

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Technology and business innovation must be adequately managed in order for companies to take advantage of big data, one group has suggested.

Gartner has recommended that chief information officers need to understand that innovation must go well beyond the technology utilised to manage big data, advising them to seek innovation when it comes to analysing figures.

Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner, said: “Big data requires an enterprise to embrace innovation on two levels.

“First, the technology itself is innovative. Second, enterprises must be willing to innovate in the way they perform decision support and analytics. This second reason is not a technology challenge, but rather a process and change management challenge.”

Mr LeHong continued by saying that big data technologies bring innovative ways of analysing existing business problems and opportunities.

Big data’s ability to assess unstructured data in large volumes and from disparate sources brings a number of innovative opportunities for companies, though there is little precedence for the ways big data can add value to an enterprise.

CIOs should treat big data projects as innovation schemes that require change management efforts, while a business also requires time to trust new data sources and new analytics.

Mr LeHong stated: “CIOs must ensure that big data projects that improve analytical speed always include a process redesign effort that aims at getting maximum benefit from that speed.

“Before pursuing big data investments, ensure that the evaluating team has a clear understanding of how faster analytics will lead to an improved business outcome — and build this into the business case.”

Gartner found that early adopter enterprises that implement faster analytical capabilities change their processes to obtain the maximum benefit from speeds.

In some enterprises, this speed provides the ability to include a full week of sales data when analytics are being run.